attempts to escape the contingencies of emotion. The phrase endures because it
captures several important themes that lie at the heart of our topic, and which
were both brought home in the previous chapter: the sense of urgency and the
unpredictable, unreliable contingency that accompany “crises of humanity”. It
would be unwise to make this (a necessarily parochial) semantic point, but a few
dictionary definitions of “impulse” give a good sense of the dynamics at play here:
“Incitement or stimulus to action arising from a state of mind or feeling; an instance
of this... Sudden or involuntary inclination to act, without premeditation; an
instance of this... Force or influence exerted on the mind by an external stimulus; an
instance of this; (a) suggestion, incitement, instigation.”^7
What these themes preclude, however, is the existence of a definitive
singular humanitarian impulse that has a stable, transhistorical content and
resonance. Indeed, the idea of impulse might seem a rather strange way to capture
an enduring human capacity that might form the bedrock of a widening and
deepening of humanitarian concern. But there seems to be something persistent
about it. For instance, Roberto Belloni maintains that “a humanitarian impulse has
always existed in all major world religions in the form of compassion or solidarity
towards those who are in need”.^8 Like the rejection of inhumanity explored in the
previous chapter, the idea of a humanitarian impulse seems a useful way to capture
a shifting but recognisable trope of human behaviour. Moreover it leads us to
question what lies behind and enables such an impulse, and the manner in which
another’s suffering is received and transformed into concern rather than
indifference, and then perhaps ultimately into a willingness to act. This thesis uses
the idea of humanitarian impulse in the singular, as useful shorthand, but it needs
to be emphasised that it assumes a plural, malleable character, rejecting the notion
of a definitive, authentic and retrievable experience. This section examines how the
humanitarian impulse sits on a spectrum of emotional responses that range from
empathy to pity.
7
Lesley Brown, ed., The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993), 1329. 8
Belloni, "The Trouble with Humanitarianism": 452.